It's September 19th all over again

by Ben Kempas883.80ipon September 19, 2015

Cat, Gillian, Jen, Zara,

This is an apology.

An apology to you, the four amazing women who I followed in the run-up to Scotland's independence referendum. I said I would be making a film about you. We trusted each other. I believed in you. And I believed you would win. (We all believed I'd be making a film.)

You dedicated (and have been dedicating ever since) your lives to campaigning for independence – never for narrow 'nationalist' reasons but for making this world a better place.

It is now September the 19th, 2015. It has been a year since, in terms of my relationship with my home country of choice, I entered a state of shock that somehow hasn't gone away.

Filming you canvassing and talking to so many people, one door at a time, gave me – and also yourselves – a strong feeling there was going to be a Yes vote in the end. Maybe we should have spent more time talking to that 65+ age group – those core No voters. Maybe we should have figured in all the people who were too afraid to open their door. People so scared of change, they wouldn't even discuss it.

In the end, this was the only happy moment of September 19th, 2014: Glasgow saying Yes. It also contains some proof I was actually filming.

Before that date, I used to say I would seriously consider leaving Scotland if there was a No vote to independence. How could anyone choose to throw out an opportunity like that! A chance to build a more equal society, to get rid of nuclear weapons, and to be collectively creative in defining what a 21st-century country stands for.

Instead, what did I do? Soon after the referendum, and after more than three years with the Scottish Documentary Institute, I started a new company in this very country.

The company is called Film & Campaign. It was born out of necessity but has really taken off. There is great demand to figure out how documentary films can contribute to change. And that's what we do. In that respect, the last 11 months have been an amazing ride.

The downside of the new company doing well is that I have yet to properly watch all that footage we shot for And Then You Win. What I'd really like to do now is share the experience of watching that footage and judging it from today's perspective, one year on.